How a Russian Journalist Exposed the Anti-Gay Crackdown in Chechnya

This spring, news of a campaign of repression against gay men in Chechnya, a republic in Russia’s North Caucasus, began to appear in the United States and Europe. Dozens of men suspected of being gay were reportedly being held in secret prisons; many had been tortured, and several had died. Fifty members of Congress signed a letter calling on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to raise the issue of violence against gay men with Russian officials. The State Department released a statement saying that it was “increasingly concerned” about the situation and that it “categorically” condemned the “persecution of individuals based on their sexual orientation,” but to date neither Tillerson nor Donald Trump has spoken publicly about the issue. Other foreign leaders have not been so circumspect. Last month, in a meeting in Moscow, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to exert his influence to “insure that minorities’ rights are protected.” On May 29th, at a testy joint press conference in Paris, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, challenged Putin on the need to protect Chechnya’s gay community, saying, “I will be constantly vigilant on these issues.”

‘They Starve You. They Shock You’: Inside the Anti-Gay Pogrom in Chechnya

GROZNY, Russia — It was supposed to be a night out. But for the young man who calls himself Maksim, as for scores of other gay men arrested in a pogrom this month in Russia’s Chechnya region, it pivoted into nearly two weeks of beatings and torture.

Maksim said it had started with a chat room conversation with “a very good old friend who is also gay,” and who suggested that they meet at an apartment. When Maksim arrived, however, he was greeted not by his friend but by agents who beat him. Later, they strapped him to a chair, attached electrical wires to his hands with alligator clips and began an interrogation.

Chechen police 'have rounded up more than 100 suspected gay men'

Authorities in the Russian republic of Chechnya have launched an anti-gay campaign that has led to authorities rounding up dozens of men suspected of being homosexual, according to the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and human rights activists.

The newspaper’s report, by an author regarded as a leading authority on Chechnya, claimed that more than 100 people had been detained and three men killed in the roundup. It claimed that among those detained were well-known local television personalities and religious figures.

Revealed: Russia's worst war crime in Chechnya

Vladimir Putin is the new hero of Russian democracy, courted by Western leaders. He is also responsible for one of the most savage atrocities since the Second World War. John Sweeney is the first journalist to reach the devastated village of Katyr Yurt, where 363 people were slaughtered by Russian forces

Russia: special report 

Crisis in Chechnya: special report 

Her face burnt almost beyond recognition, she lies prone on her hospital bed and tells in a child's whispers of the day her mother, father, her two brothers, her sister and her cousin - among 363 people from the same village - were wiped out.

Russian Anti-Torture Activist Assaulted in Chechnya

One of Russia’s leading human rights activists, Igor Kalyapin, was assaulted in the Chechen capital, Grozny, on Wednesday night by masked men who beat him and doused him in eggs, cakes, and green paint.

Kalyapin, whose nongovernmental group, the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, is known for investigating abuses in the region, was in the city to meet a member of the Chechen Human Rights Council, Heda Saratova, and some journalists, according to his colleague Dmitriy Piskunov.

Russian Activists and Journalists Attacked at Chechen Border

Activists from one of Russia’s most prominent rights groups, the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, were beaten by masked men as they attempted to bring a group of journalists into Chechnya today.

The ambush was carried out by about 20 men who beat the activists and journalists with sticks and set their vehicles on fire, according to Dmitriy Piskunov, a lawyer in the group’s Moscow office. Piskunov told The Intercept that the incident took place at the start of a press tour organized by the committee to give Russian and foreign journalists an unvarnished look at conditions in Chechnya, the Muslim-majority region ruled with notable brutality by Ramzan Kadyrov, an image-conscious leader appointed by the Kremlin.

The Chechen Factor and the Marathon Bombings

Last Monday I was on Boylston Street, having just completed my first Boston Marathon, when the bombs detonated. As is so often the case in the digital age, I may have been just a couple of hundred yards from the epicenter, but in the immediate aftermath, people watching on television and following via social media knew far more than I about the unfolding horror. I could hear the sirens, could see some anxious faces, but I was shielded from the full force of events.

The fact that I never felt that initial sense of panic proved to be a calming factor in ensuing days, as I repeatedly contemplated my good fortune at not having been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But now, as editor of EurasiaNet, I’m wrestling with the news that those suspected of carrying out the bombings, Tamerlan and Djokar Tsarnaev, are Chechens who lived for a long stretch in Kyrgyzstan.This adds a potentially volatile element to efforts to seek justice for the victims of the attacks, as well as to foster a sense of closure for those in the Boston metropolitan area, and all those affected by the mind-boggling events of the past week.

The US, Russia and Chechnya After Boston

When President Obama meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in September, they’ll have a lot to talk about. Some things on the agenda will have prime importance: the crisis in Syria, talks with Iran, disarmament and nuclear weapons among them. Far less important are issues on the fringe, including the deplorable state of human rights in Russia and now, after the Boston bombings, terrorism.

Terrorism, all agree, is bad. But marrying the already-overblown US “war on terrorism”—complete with drones, war in Afghanistan and questionable treatment of suspects at home—to Moscow’s heavy-handed, bloody assault on mostly Muslim rebels in the Caucasus just isn’t a good idea. There’s no doubt that Putin and the security services in Russia would love the United States to become an active ally in cracking down on radical and militant Muslim groups from Central Asia to the Caucasus to, well, Syria, where the United States is supporting the very same radical Muslim insurgents that it opposes elsewhere, including in Iraq.

But that’s a terrible idea.